Jimmy Savile abused dead bodies and claimed to have worn rings made from their glass eyes, according to a series of hospital reports released Thursday.

Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, apologized to the victims of “sickening and prolific” abuse by the disgraced, late BBC disc jockey and television presenter in hospitals and hospices. He said they were “let down badly” by the Government and health service.

Savile repeatedly exploited the “trust of a nation” for his own “vile purposes,” Mr Hunt said.

The disc jockey was responsible for a litany of rape and sexual abuse in NHS institutions over at least five decades until 2009, according to 28 official reports covering the institutions involved.

His victims included staff and patients, toddlers and pensioners, as he visited as a celebrity fundraiser and volunteer.

He “cherry-picked” voluntary portering jobs that would bring him into contact “with the young and vulnerable.”

It also emerged that staff at a number of hospitals had been told of incidents but failed to pass on complaints to senior managers.

Staff told investigators the decisions not to make formal complaints reflected the “culture at the time” and the way the entertainer had masked his abuse with “pretend humour” that misled onlookers into thinking “nothing was amiss.”

Among the most disturbing findings were “macabre accounts” of claims that the presenter, who died in 2011, performed sex acts on dead bodies in the mortuary at Leeds General Infirmary and at least one other hospital.

Investigators were told that Savile claimed to have “interfered with the bodies of deceased patients” at the Leeds mortuary, while a patient at Barnet General Hospital, in north London, overheard nurses discussing seeing Savile have sex with a dead body at another hospital.

Dr Sue Proctor, who led the investigation into Savile’s abuse at Leeds General, said Savile also claimed that large rings he wore were “made from the glass eyes of dead bodies at the mortuary.” One witness said Savile claimed he would “wheel the dead bodies around at night.”

The inquiry began with his first contact with the hospital in 1960 and included testimonies from 60 people, 33 of them patients. Victims ranged in age from five to 75. Three incidents were rapes.

Nine victims reported incidents to staff but they were not passed to superiors.

The inquiries, which also included a review of Savile’s links to Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital, were overseen by Kate Lampard, the former chairman of the Financial Ombudsman Service. At Broadmoor investigators found “clear failings” in security as Savile had keys allowing unrestricted access to ward areas. Savile sexually abused at least five individuals there.

That report also said that an ex-patient reported passing on complaints to Alan Franey, then the general manager there and a friend of Savile’s, from three female patients in the Nineties, although there was no record of the complaint and Mr Franey could not recall handling it.

The reports add to disclosures of Savile’s wider abuse from Scotland Yard’s Operation Yewtree, begun in 2012 after a documentary exposed his paedophilia. Police found that Savile had 450 victims. A number of the cases in yesterday’s reports were also investigated by police.

Mr Hunt said: “I want to apologize on behalf of the Government and the NHS to all the victims who were abused by Savile in NHS-run institutions. We let them down badly and however long ago it may have been, many of them are still reliving the pain they went through.”

Mr Hunt said he “hasn’t ruled out anything” after MPs called for politicians and others to be “called to book” for anything they did that may have aided the abuse.

The Rt Rev Paul Butler, Bishop of Durham, was among those calling for a wider public inquiry into abuse over the past 50 years. “If we don’t face up to the past failures we will never really improve the future,” Bishop Butler told the Lords.

NHS chiefs described the findings as “truly awful,” while both current chief executives of Leeds General and Broadmoor apologized to victims.